‘—

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

In her chapter, “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence”, Adrienne Rich argues that heterosexuality is institutionalized and provides many examples to prove how the institutionalized heterosexuality(of women) has always benefited the men. Adrienne believes that the institutionalized heterosexuality of women has always given men physical, economic, and emotional access. The institutionalized heterosexuality has also made it seem as a norm for women to be heterosexual and to follow the standards/regulations that men have both explicitly and implicitly imposed on them. Such compulsory sexual conduct has been in both public and private spheres. It’s been in the public sphere in many forms such as clitoridectomy, sterilization, marriage, prostitution, slavery, in the workforce and much more. This oppression is also present at home whether it’s through father-daughter/brother-sister incest, marital rape, wife-beating and the list goes on.

The control that men possess over women also shape the way that women behave, the way society is structured, and how the social and sexual standards are set. In Rich’s chapter, she talks about how men exploit women in the workforce and hold power over them by the higher positions that they hold. Rich also brings up how women also serve in secondary jobs such as waitresses, secretaries, and nurses, which continues to set them in the mercy of sex-valued jobs that serve the male transactions. Another way that heterosexuality is institutionalized is through the absence of lesbianism in the arts, literature, and history. No matter which medium it is, most literature, arts, and historic document have excluded lesbianism in order to eliminate any evidence of its presence and to demonize it or make it seem as something that is “unnatural”.

I think that Adrienne Rich does a great job in providing examples of how the institutionalized sexuality of women has always kept women from achieving equality and how society has not allowed women to be who they are, instead it gave them a role to follow.